Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [34]
Everywhere you went people discussed the drought, and who could blame them? Lumsden’s economy revolved around agriculture, with wheat and canola the primary cash crops. About 70 percent of the people living in this region worked as farmers; the other 30 percent made their living supplying goods and services to the farmers. Once the fields withered and died, it would be like the steel mills shutting down in Pittsburgh.
Government subsidies would give the farmers enough money to replant. But a delay in aid or an early frost would make replanting impractical. Lumsden would suffer a trickle-down tragedy, with businesses closing and jobs lost. The drought even threatened the ecosystem, something I realized while golfing with several townspeople. Newly hatched goslings covered the course we played on. We noticed how thin the chicks looked as they waddled in a yellow line behind their mothers from one sparse water puddle to another. Life was coming into this prairie, but without rain anytime soon there would be no food to support it. The goslings would starve, and the farmers would have to butcher many of their cows since there would be no healthy grass to feed them.
As we neared the end of our round, I told my golfing partners not to worry, that my coming to town was a visit from Henderson the Rainmaker. Precipitation just seemed to follow me. No one laughed. That’s when someone mentioned how they would lose their entire wheat crop if it didn’t rain in the next few days. Made me feel like an ass with my cheap comment.
To be honest, though, I had been only half kidding. Climate can exert such a dramatic impact on a game, ballplayers develop an instinct for the weather. I noticed the wind blowing out of the south and felt a warm front upon us. The air thickened with the promise of rain. Mentioning that, though, failed to boost anyone’s spirits. “They’ve said that on the news now for four weeks and we haven’t seen a drop,” said one local.
“Those weathermen,” a friend of his huffed, “couldn’t forecast wind if they stood in the middle of a tornado.”
They did not appreciate my flatland jokes either.
That night, in a bar near my motel, the dry talk of weather continued. Only the beers were wet, and did they keep coming. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to buy the Spaceman a drink. The Oliver Stone in me suspected a conspiracy and figured all the Regina players in the room had paid for most of those rounds, hoping to pound Old Style lager into me that night so that they could pound on me during the game the following day.
Oh, had they only known! I perform better with alcoholic toxins circulating through my bloodstream. Whenever I come into a game nursing a hangover, I pitch economically and concentrate on throwing strikes so that I can get my head under that ice pack in the dugout as soon as possible. Why else do you think David Wells surrenders so few walks? Focusing on the hitters also provides a distraction from the pain. My brain shuts down and instinct takes over, freeing me to fall into a natural pitching rhythm. I don’t feel any pressure on the mound because . . . well, because I don’t feel anything at all. So when I woke the next morning, my itchy tongue, fuzzy teeth, and cotton-stuffed skull told me the Regina club was about to pay for those beers one more time.
As the game started, a churning, gagging dust blew across the field, reminding me of those goslings and my silly remarks. The atmosphere did not hold the slightest moisture. My hangover notwithstanding, the Regina batters hit me hard in the first few innings; I had forgotten what weird